From pre-op to post-op, the head cover has helped keep her patients
warmer, says Dr. Bazzell, adding, "The nurses in OR like it. The
patients sometimes at first think it's kind of strange. But when we put
that on and pre-warm them with the cotton blankets and forced-air,
it's a rare occasion when I have to do something in addition to keep
them warm. And keeping somebody in the recovery room for less
time becomes very cost-effective because we're a small surgery cen-
ter."
Blanket solution
Everybody loves a warm blanket. From naps on a cozy couch on a
winter afternoon to an effective and comforting warmer for surgical
patients, you can't really go wrong. But Ms. Kirchner found cotton
blankets were making her uncomfortable. In that, for one, they were
getting costly as patient warmers for her facility.
"For us to reprocess our blankets was $5 a blanket, because it's done
by weight," says Ms. Kirchner. "Cost definitely came into it. We were
wasting a lot of money and not accomplishing what we set out to do."
So last summer, she made a change to a conductive polymer fabric
warming device, which warms the patient from above and below
simultaneously. "I think it keeps them warmer and there's less poten-
tial of contaminating a wound or patient," says Ms. Kirchner. "We look
a lot at comorbidities, like a frail elderly person, and even if they're in
for cataract surgery, we use the polymer fabric because they recover
faster and go home faster."
Her facility, which performs procedures for total joints in addition to
robotic, spine and GYN cases, warms patients who undergo a surgery
lasting an hour or more. It's a half-hour threshold for all children or
anyone with comorbidities. Ms. Kirchner's facility still uses cotton
blankets pre-warmed with a blanket warmer, just not as often as
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